


Mercy Mild

by HoneySempai



Series: Gundam Wing Secret Santa Stories [1]
Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Anxiety, Can we talk about how dystopic the AC timeline is, Christian Ethics, Christmas, Disabled Mariemaia Khushrenada, Do you wanna build a metaphor, Even wealthy non-pacifists pressed their kids into military service, Forgiveness, Gen, Like forget the guerilla rebels, Mariemaia is a child, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Noin was in the Alliance military when she was TWELVE, Positive Portrayals of Religion, Remorse, Snowball Fight, Where childhood is a privilege of wealthy pacifists, it kinda has to be a snowman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-16 23:50:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13064757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HoneySempai/pseuds/HoneySempai
Summary: A year after the Eve War, Mariemaia and Lady Une are still learning.Written forGW-ficrecfridayas part of theGW Secret Santa Exchange





	Mercy Mild

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bryony (REBB)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/REBB/gifts).



Former Lt. Colonel Lady Une holds in her possession a mansion formerly owned by the Khushrenada family. Upon Treize’s death, technically the house should have passed to Dorothy Catalonia, as the last remaining member of that family, a maternal relation though she may be.

Dorothy hadn’t been interested, though, and almost immediately passed the deed onto Lady Une. She had considered offering it up as a base of operations for the Preventers, enough to actually mention it to the President, but its placement wasn’t strategic enough, and since it was meant as a private residence, it was barely fortified and not set up to easily become so. 

It was too haunted for personal use, though, and too haunted, according to the public imagination, for sale, as well. So for all of AC 196 it sat in the dark under dust covers while Une rented a one-bedroom in Brussels and tried not to think about it too much beyond filing the property taxes owed on it. 

Mid-way through January of AC 197, though, it had been stocked with food and dusted and aired out enough to be fit for human habitation, and by the beginning of March the last accessibility ramp had been completed. Une took some time off—Sally stepped in as the leadership—and she and Mariemaia did their best to make it into an actual home together. 

And they've done very well, which is why it stings so much to be spending Christmas at Preventers’ HQ and not at the mansion. 

Much to Miss Relena’s eternal professional and personal frustration, ridding the world of WMDs has not also ridden it of the human impulse towards violence. Despite everyone’s fervent hoping that they’d be left to enjoy the holiday at home, Lady Une has been called in for her input on a worrisome contingent possibly forming in the Gobi Desert. Mariemaia had waved her off in the Preventer’s HQ lobby, where she spread a book—an early present sent by Miss Relena—across her lap near the impersonal but elegant company Christmas tree, intending to read until she came back. 

The book’s been read, and she is not back.

A second read-through is almost halfway done, and she is still not back yet.

It's fine. Her foster mother has an incredibly important job protecting the ESUN from threats like the Barton Army. Especially since Mariemaia knows the Eve War had revealed the Preventers' weaknesses, and small but fierce challenges had been popping up throughout the year, starting with the attack at Miss Relena's birthday.

Mariemaia had been almost as petrified that day as she had been in the Presidential Palace, and even though the former Gundam pilots took care of that skirmish in a laughably short amount of time, the terror of those two days will start singing in her blood on days when she least expects it.

Sometimes she imagines what it'd be like to live in the village in the Gobi Desert where this contingent in forming, or to have witnessed the latest bombing in former Syria, or to reside in the L5 cluster where Wufei and Sally are almost permanently stationed to subvert violent activity before it starts. To not have the luxury of all five Gundam pilots pulling apart a terrorist plot like a cheap plastic bag. To still live in fear even as Miss Relena and her team run themselves ragged trying to maintain the peace, the same fear Mariemaia had visited upon X-18999 and Brussels only a year ago—

She doesn't realize that her eyes have squinted shut against tears, hot with loneliness and stinging with remorse, until a loud _thump_ startles her into opening her eyes, and she drops her book in favor of grabbing the wheels of her chair, ready to flee as best she can. A quick scan of the room shows the remains of what was probably a snowball smashed up against a nearby window. For a moment icy fear seizes her guts—it’s an attack, however amateur and crude; from the side this time, not from above like it is in her nightmares—but she swallows the lump in her throat and tries to will her heartbeat to slow down. Lady Une and Miss Relena would stand their ground, and so will she.

There’s no similar assault on the window within the next fifteen seconds, and the rational part of Mariemaia’s brain starts to assert itself. It was only a snowball, not a rock or bullet or bomb. So it’s probably just someone playing around on the grounds. 

She gives the joints in her fingers another handful of seconds to loosen up enough for her to actually wheel her chair in the direction of the window and see who it is.

On the other side of the window, crouched behind some bushes, is the man with her uncle’s name. 

She sees a good bit of Trowa Barton (that’s how she concieves of him in her head, “Trowa Barton”; it distinguishes him from Uncle Trowa, even as Uncle Trowa is fading from memory); apparently he and Lady Une have a history, and while not a full-time agent he gets called in on special assignments. She sees the man he’s hiding from less often, but still recognizes him as Quatre Raberba Winner, who himself is often called in, though usually as a consultant more than a combatant. But she’s never seen either man in a snowball fight.

She’s never seen _anyone_ in a snowball fight, she realizes. It just wasn’t something Grandfather ever took her out to do, and Uncle Trowa was away most of the time, including in winter, rarely seeing her for longer than it took to give her a good-night pat on the head. Public school and friends her own age weren’t part of her life either; still aren’t, because she had resisted even private school in favor of tutors. You don’t go from figureheading a rebellion to transferring mid-year into the second grade.

Tears are threatening to spill again, and she’s startled out of those as well, this time by a warm hand on her shoulder.

“Sorry it took me a moment to come back,” Lady Une says, as Mariemaia’s senses come back and she grabs blindly at her foster mother’s hand. “I stayed behind to clean up after I dismissed everyone.”

Mariemaia nods silently, blinking back the wet drops in the corners of her eyes. Luckily Lady Une is too distracted by the scene outside the window to notice. 

“They appear to be enjoying themselves,” she muses, and Mariemaia manages a bright-sounding _mmhmm_. “Good. They’re on standby for now. Hopefully some of the older agents can calm the situation down before I have to send them in.”

Mariemaia nods again, unconsciously squeezing Lady Une’s fingers, and she feels her foster mother’s free hand come up to absently stroke her hair at the back of her head. 

“You know, in some places at least, there was a time when it would be unthinkable to have seventeen-year-olds doing work like this,” Lady Une says, as if she doesn’t only have four years on them. “I’d like to...I’d like to bring that kind of world about, if I could.” Unconsciously she squeezes Mariemaia’s shoulder. “Maybe by the time _you’re_ seventeen, no one will expect anyone your age to be anything but students.”

Maybe she hears Mariemaia swallow the lump in her throat, or uses the reflection to catch how pink Mariemaia’s face is or the dangerous glitter in her eyes, because Mariemaia finds her wheelchair gently turning around, and Lady Une crouching in front of her once the brake is engaged. 

“What’s wrong?”

Mariemaia shakes her head, but a little whimper makes it passed her lips, and Lady Une's brow knits as she wracks her brains for what could be the problem. 

“Do you miss your family?”

Mariemaia shakes her head again. Mama was gone before Mariemaia could memorize her face, Uncle Trowa was as good as a phantom even before he died, she had never met her father and her grandfather had brushed off her imminent death as a temporary inconvenience. Her only real family is kneeling right in front of her, and Mariemaia wants her to be around all the time but she doesn’t _deserve_ it. 

“I’m...sorry that I brought you here on Christmas,” Lady Une tries again. “I had to come in, and I thought you wouldn’t want to be at the mansion alone...”

The wheelchair stutters a little as Mariemaia throws her weight forward and her arms around her foster mother’s neck; Lady Une catches her before she can fall out of the wheelchair, and gently pushes her back to safety without forcing her to break the hold. 

“I’m so-o-rry-y,” Mariemaia wails into Lady Une’s shoulder.

Lady Une’s brow knits as her mind tries to right itself. “What on earth _for_?” 

“F-for last year,” she’s just barely able to make out, and her face sets in a frown.

“What happened last year is the fault of your grandfather, not you.” She feels Mariemaia tense up to argue, and cuts her off, putting her hands on the girl’s arms and straightening her up. “Why are you even thinking of this now?”

“Be _cause_ ,” Mariemaia shudder-sighs, her face pink and damp, “if we hadn’t...people wouldn’t be, be...rebelling, now.”

Lady Une arches an eyebrow. “Of course they would be. We had threats to the peace all last year, before your grandfather showed up. Didn’t you know...?”

Mariemaia looks a mix of mortified and stricken, and Lady Une sighs. Of course Dekim Barton wouldn’t have shaken Mariemaia’s confident self-absorption with news of rival rebellions. And Lady Une had tried to refocus the girl’s education on actual academic pursuits this whole past year, ignoring even recent history in favor of math and science and art. Apparently she had been remiss in doing so. 

“Every time a conflict ends there will be people who are unhappy with the result,” Lady Une says. “You are not responsible for what other people do with their dissatisfaction.”

“Exposed your weaknesses,” Mariemaia mumbles, stubborn. 

“Sweetheart.” It’s an endearment that slipped out of Lady Une’s mouth unexpectedly one day, and though it startled her at first, she likes the feel of it as it passes her lips. “Our weaknesses were already obvious. It didn’t take a tactical genius to see that we were understaffed.” A small smile forms. “Perhaps you should look at it this way: because of your grandfather’s actions, more people, competent ones, joined the Preventers this year than last. Your grandfather’s rebellion accomplished more in the service of peace than it did anything else.”

Mariemaia tries to return the smile, but it comes out so miserable that Lady Une declines to accept it. 

“What’s actually bothering you, sweetheart?”

Mariemaia fidgets in her chair, face hot, stomach knotting. Lady Une waits, patient, even though her knees are starting to ache from crouching for so long.

“I hurt people,” Mariemaia finally says, a confession barely above a whisper. “Or I...I was going to, if they didn’t do what I told them to. And I...I scared them. Horribly. I was, it was...” Mariemaia bunches her long shirt in her fists. “Cruel.”

Lady Une inhales, deeply. She can’t pretend the same concerns, far more substantiated in her case than Mariemaia’s, haven’t plagued her waking days or kept her up at night. 

“You didn’t know any better.”

Mariemaia presses her lips together, and swallows; she doesn’t have an argument, but there’s no place of acceptance for the words to land. Lady Une rises, folding her arms as she thinks further, harder. Outside the window Trowa and Quatre seem to have called a truce on their snowball fight, instead electing to begin building a snowman.

“It’s been a long time since I thought anything about this,” Lady Une says, “but I was told, when I was even younger than you, that the point of Christmas is that humanity receives a second chance.” The earlier smile turns wry. “I killed many people in the last war, Mariemaia. I ordered the deaths of even more. I didn’t know any better then, either. I had to be taught, just as you did.” The image of Relena pushing the gun away flits across her mind’s eye. “I am _still_ being taught. We all are. Even our vaunted Miss Relena pulled a gun on me once.”

Mariemaia’s eyes widen. The news shouldn’t be _so_ surprising—that slap across the face is rather memorable—but _still_...

“And no one _has_ to forgive me for what I did,” Lady Une continues. “I don’t even _have_ to forgive myself, if I don’t want to. And neither do you. However,” she reaches down, pushing a strand of Mariemaia’s hair off her forehead and brushing it back, “at one time, in some places, people believed that giving a second chance was not only a great good, it was the true order of things. The way things were _supposed_ to be.” She cups her daughter’s chin, tilting her face up so they meet each other’s gazes. “That’s another kind of world I’d like to bring about, if I could. I don’t believe we can have any sort of lasting peace, otherwise.” 

Mariemaia bites her lip and tries to nod. Lady Une squeezes her chin, making sure she has her attention, so she can give her little girl what she needs. 

“So I forgive you, Mariemaia. You didn’t know any better.”

Mariemaia hugs her again, her arms flung around her mother’s legs and her face pressed against her stomach, and in turn Lady Une wraps her left arm around Mariemaia’s head, the fingers of her right hand threading through her daughter’s hair. Through the window she can see Trowa and Quatre place the second layer of their snowman atop the foundation they’ve already laid.

“Let’s go outside,” Lady Une says. “Winner and Barton have the right idea.”

“You wanna have a snowball fight?” Mariemaia mumbles into her stomach.

It takes Lady Une a second to recall that’s what they’d been doing before she turned Mariemaia’s chair around. Of course that’s all the girl would think of them doing. 

“I’d rather build something,” she says, releasing the brake on Mariemaia’s chair. “If you’d like to help me.”

Mariemaia nods this time, and giggles wetly, slapping her hands against the wheels of her chair. “Probably can’t have a snowball fight anyway.”

“Between you and me,” Lady Une says, tapping a finger to her lips, “I think building snowmen is better.”

Mariemaia pauses, looking more thoughtful than Lady Une expected her to be after a comment like that, meant only to make her feel better about the extent of her mobility. 

“I bet it is, too.”

It may not be enough just yet, Lady Une thinks as she wheels Mariemaia towards the coatroom. A child’s heart is as stubborn as it is flexible, and Dekim Barton made sure to fill his granddaughter’s with all the wrong things. But she thinks, by the time she’s braked and anchored Mariemaia safely against the wall outside, and Trowa and Quatre have come over to see what’s going on and how they can help, that it’s a start, and that out of all the gifts anyone will give this year, this is the one the whole world needs, and hopefully one day will cherish, the most.

In AC 195, people did not have the peace of mind to enjoy Christmas. They didn't the year following year, either. AC 197 is the start of something different. Lady Une, and Mariemaia, will make sure of it.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I’m certainly not going to pretend that Christianity as a religion or an institution is flawless and perfect—one only needs to crack open a history textbook or talk to a non-Christian to know full well that’s not the case—but at its heart, it has some good ideas that wound up getting reflected (albeit in a secular/nondenominational context) in the show, and that I thought might be apropos for these ladies to say and hear for a Christmas fic.


End file.
